Dinner for £200? That's a bit rich for my taste

So many people here are doing so well that London can now sustain an excellent and varied restaurant culture. Although we may not all be able to afford to partake, it's still an achievement to celebrate. Directly or indirectly, we all benefit from London's new gastronomy.

Perhaps. I still find the prices people seem prepared to pay in restaurants, and the ostentation of the food they want to eat, confounding. The Zagat survey suggests that the average cost of a meal in London is now £39.09, but this is calculated to include only one drink, so the real price is surely nearer to £50. Among the 20 most expensive restaurants, it's reckoned that the average bill for one is £89.90, say £180 for two. But this, too, is an underestimate - the real pain barrier for a meal for a couple in a good restaurant, not even Michelin-starred, is more like £200, or perhaps even £250.

In an intrepid piece of investigative reporting, an Evening Standard journalist had a simple fishy lunch at Wilton's with his wife and got a bill for £245.38. Savour the sum, at least.

For some, in the land of giant bonuses, these prices are still token. But even people in their twenties, earning modestly, seem to think it's normal to go out regularly to restaurants that aren't anything special but still cost £80 or so for two.

I find this incomprehensible - not because I'm a puritan, not interested in food, but precisely because I am very interested. It's so easy to buy good food in London - say, from a farmers' market, a cheap brace of partridges, some nice bacon, good fruit and veg, great cheese - that is simple to cook and make better than anything in a nondescript restaurant. It's also quite possible, if not so easy, to find good value in eating out, whether in Vietnamese restaurants, good pizzerias, unpretentious gastropubsor Wagamama, the Zagat readers' favourite. Relatively simple food tastes best, as our best foodwriters have told us time and again.

Yet so many people continue to award themselves elaborate food in luxurious restaurants. To justify their prices, their menus are stuffed with the same lavish ingredients, grovellingly served. It's as though, above a certain income level, many people believe they are due nothing less than a great banquet every time. And most restaurant reviewers collaborate in this assumption. They seem to think they're tasters for emperors.

All great cities cultivate luxury and London is rich now as never before. So what did I expect? But contemplating the menus of our supposed top restaurants doesn't make me feel hungry any more. Just a bit ill.